Potential
by Birdie Lo Green
Summary: Twelve years after Remus Lupin lost his loved ones to Halloween, the past comes calling with a knock on his front door. (Pre-POA)


Remus Lupin had turned his back on his own potential. He had graduated from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry at the top of his class, but the glowing reviews he had worked hard to achieve had fallen on deaf ears. A single look over his medical records always stopped prospective employers in their tracks. The comfortable home life he had once sank into after rejections had disintegrated around him one Halloween night, twelve years ago. Suddenly, the war which had been stridently brewing throughout his school years had come to a head. A prophecy had named the infant son of Remus's best friend's, James and Lily Potter as the one to vanquish the dark wizard Lord Voldemort. They had gone in to hiding and less than a month after entrusting their whereabouts to a friend, the unthinkable had happened. James and Lily had died but Harry had survived and Voldemort had been defeated and disappeared.

* * *

Remus had retreated into a cavern of outdated clothes, face down photographs, stale cigarette smoke and forbidden locked rooms. His nine to five career stamping and cataloguing books, which were as dog-eared and used as he had grown to look, required as little responsibility as he was willing to live up to. He wandered disconnected and intoxicated through a borrowed muggle world, earning just enough to survive. He lived on a word limit, never exerting more energy than was necessary. He felt like a deep sea creature floating through darkness. Yet once a month he tore viciously around the cellar of his home barely able to control himself. Under every full moon Remus Lupin's weakened body was transformed into a violent and ravenous werewolf. Denied feasts of the flesh, Remus went to great extents to hide evidence of the beast's rage with healing pastes and energy tonics, long cardigan sleeves and chunky scarves. Once Remus may have had caring friends at willing to nurse him back to health but now memories of those times were denied. He slept but never dreamed, and in his self inflicted sentence of solitude reminders that life was all he had came few and far between. Death was no simple matter for a creature of the night and Remus did not have the strength to do what needed to be done. When a knock on his front door broke through the numb monotony of an inebriated evening in late July, he could not fathom who could possibly be standing on his front step. He also could not stop himself from hoping that it would be someone with the courage that he lacked.

* * *

The past had come calling in the form of a tall thin man with shoulder length dark hair. He stood, squinting in the harsh morning sun without a hint of a smile. **"Lupin?"** It had been a long time since they had set eyes upon one another but he had not changed. Remus, however would not have recognised himself either. His clothes were more threadbare than they had ever been. His cheeks were hollow and the dark bags under his eyes made his amber eyes more pronounced in the daylight. His hair and beard were overgrown, almost covering the facial scars which had come to define him. **"How are you?"** Remus would not waste his word limit on a reply. This man knew all that Remus had been through and he had never shown him or anyone else a scrap of pity. Remus laughed in spite of himself. The man recoiled, repulsed by the firewhiskey on his breath. **"May I come in?"** Remus would have been powerless to stop him. For years he had hoped that Voldemort's disgruntled and abandoned Deatheaters would find him out and make an example of him, but they never had. Even they, who deserved punishment most of all, had carried on with their lives, where Remus could not. This man on his front step had committed unfathomable crimes under Voldemort's command and yet, with the war over, he was employed and of good health, safe and sound and undeserving.

* * *

Despite the fear that the man on his doorstep brought with him memories that Remus did not want to suffer, he let him pass in to the house. In his neat black clothes he looked out of place amongst the clutter. He looked around helplessly for a place to sit. Remus remained, stunned in the doorway trying to remember the last person who had set foot in his living room. When Remus made no efforts to be hospitable, the man swiped a pile of dusty books out of an armchair and onto the floor and sat down. His brown eyes lingered over the reinforced door to the cellar and Remus's bandaged right hand as he pushed the front door to a close. He removed a flask from his inside pocket and slid it across the stained coffee table. **"No Snape."** Remus shook his head fervently, opposed to offers of charity.

**"It's a simple immunity tonic."** Back in their schooldays when things had been at their worst, Snape had been one of the few to notice how badly Remus was coping and anonymously posted him flagons of energy tonics and pots of healing paste as a act of good will. They had still never spoken to each other in the hallways and Remus harboured no illusions that Snape had called out of concern after such an expanse of time. He had slipped into the realms of the forgotten.

* * *

**"Business or pleasure?"** Remus asked bluntly, pouring himself another drink and sinking into the sofa. Snape pulled his robes tightly around himself and lit a fire in the empty grate below the mantelpiece. Remus stared at the flames as though they were an intrusion upon his chilled serving of misery.

**"I take no****_ pleasure_**** in wading through ****_filth_****."** Remus drained his glass. They had never been friends and not even in the most desperate of circumstances would he accept Snape's pity. **"Though I daresay it's obvious that you're in dire need of the job Albus Dumbledore has sent me here to offer you."** Remus sat up a little straighter on the sagging sofa.

**"Albus wants to offer ****_me_**** a job?"** Despite being one of Remus's biggest adolescent supporters, their Headmaster had made no attempts to communicate with him in recent years. Many sacrifices had been made on his behalf simply to allow Remus to attend Hogwarts and Remus could not comprehend how he would be allowed to employ a monster to teach children.

**"The Defence Against The Dark Arts post needs to be filled,"** Snape stated, folding his hands in his lap. **"Whilst I consider myself qualified, it suffices to say that Albus thinks the job would tempt me to take up old allegiances. " **Remus had heard about Voldemort's reappearance at Hogwarts; his defeat, for the third time, at the hands of the orphaned little boy Remus had once loved. **"No doubt similar reasons prompted his outlandish desires to hire you-"**

**"What is that supposed to mean?" **Remus snapped defensively. During the war, in which Remus had lost everything, the common knowledge that Snape moved in questionably corrupt circles had been refuted by Albus Dumbledore himself. However, it was suspicion in Remus's motives which had ultimately led his friends to places from which they could not return. As a werewolf, no virtue was expected of him. Yet to this day, his innocence was all he had.

**"Not a single paper in all this mess?"** Snape asked, surveying the piles of books and forms. **"It seems your old ****_friend_**** has done the unthinkable: Black has escaped Azkaban."**

* * *

Snape reached inside of his cloak and pulled out a rolled up copy of the Daily Prophet. Remus had not read the wizarding paper in a decade. He took the paper from him with shaking hands and unrolled it to reveal the cover. Another face from his nightmares was staring out at him: mass murderer Sirius Black. He had famously gone to prison without trial aged twenty one. His crime: murdering twelve muggles and his friend Peter Pettigrew in broad daylight, after betraying the whereabouts of his best friend in hiding, James Potter, his wife Lily and their infant son, Harry to the dark Lord Voldemort. Remus had been best friends with Sirius, Peter, James and Lily since he was eleven and lost them all ten years later in the space of twenty four hours. For all of the grief, misery and rage, Remus had never been able to overcome his confusion. How he was the only one who had escaped the bloodbath, was a mystery which had haunted him ever since.

* * *

The short story which followed Sirius's photo stated that, whilst it was unknown how he had escaped, they were aware where he was headed. Sirius had been talking in his sleep. 'He's at Hogwarts'. Remus balled up the paper and threw it in to the fire. If Sirius was going after Harry, Remus was going to make sure he had to go through him first. He owed James and Lily that much.

**"He is ****_no _****_friend_**** of mine!"**

**"Albus will be glad to hear it. He recalls that you were the ****_brightest_**** student in our year. I imagine a great deal of professional leverage will be involved but for obvious reasons he seems quite adamant that you return to teach the subject." **Remus was astonished by the responsibility of such an offer. Apart from the repairing of his monthly injuries Remus barely performed magic anymore and was practically living as a muggle. He had not ventured into the magical world in over a decade. He simply could not endure reminders of a time when he was happy. **"Though I suppose anyone who managed to get ideas to stick within the tiny minds of people as dense as Potter and as thoughtless as Black, ought to be given an award, let alone a teaching job."**

* * *

Remus's breath caught in his throat and he lapsed into a painful coughing fit. He had not heard his school friend's names uttered within the same sentence in longer than he cared to admit. Both were dead to him now and he had done his utmost to remove every trace of them from his life. Snape looked around at the bare mantelpiece and the patches of wallpaper which were paler than the rest as though he knew exactly the kind of photographs which had once filled the emptiness. He stood up and Remus sat forward with glossy eyes. Snape took a heavy jingling velvet pouch from his inside pocket and placed it down on the coffee table. **"Consider this an advance. ****_Sober up_****. Get some ****_sleep_****. ****_Eat_**** something. Buy some new clothes and pack a case. Expect potions in the post and come September 1****st**** be on that platform for the train at eleven-"**Remus stood up and trailed him across the messy room like a lapdog.

**"I didn't accept your offer-"**

**"****_This_**** is your alternative,"** Snape said simply turning in the door to look back at the chaos with disdain. **"And you wouldn't want to be responsible for my reunion with dark forces-"**

**"Hogwarts holds too much my heart doesn't care to revisit."** Remus had found family within its walls and lost them outside of it. He longed to turn the clock back but there was no raising the dead. Snape stopped on the porch, as Remus sank drunkenly in the doorway.

**"You alone have the power to make it bricks and mortar."** Snape had lost someone he had met at Hogwarts that Halloween night too. It made sense that he no longer thought of her. **"More to the point, never has the saying like father like son been so liberally applied. Potter's identical brat is just as dim and it seems you were only one able to educate him. It's a matter of urgency. Trouble flowers at his feet. The delinquent needs you."**


End file.
